Customers can still buy the “official” book if they want, but they have to select it specifically from the list of sellers rather than just automatically clicking “Buy.” Amazon doesn’t really make it easy to tell which one, but it’s usually the one listed as “sold by Amazon.”

Nate has some great defenestrations of some of the most heated rhetoric surrounding the move—that Amazon is “once again[…]attempting to drive down the value of books” and so forth. He does it so well that it feels redundant to repeat it. So, instead I’ll throw it into a little context.

I’m sure there are plenty of other instances of Amazon using the “Buy” button to throw its weight around that I didn’t even notice. But it is also amusing to note that all this comes just a few months after the big commotion over the fact that Amazon doesn’t always tag the “Buy” button to the lowest-priced Marketplace item. If you’re Amazon, I suppose you’re damned if you do but also damned if you don’t.

Nor is it the first time Amazon’s actions have thrown the publishers and their advocates into tizzies. Remember when Amazon first started listing sales of used paper copies alongside new? I can’t immediately locate articles pertaining to the matter from back then, but from what I remember, you’d have thought the world was going to end. And then there was the whole furor over Amazon “devaluing” ebooks with its $9.99 loss leader price point on new-release titles and bestsellers.

But it seems to me publishers have always acted as if they were entitled to have things all their way. Whenever Amazon makes a change that they don’t like, it’s the worst thing ever, because Amazon is obviously evil and trying to drive them all out of business. And they seem to lose all sense of proportion over it–their eventual response to Amazon’s ebook markdowns was to take part in an illegal collusive scheme to impose agency pricing across all ebook sales outlets that was eventually smacked down by the courts.

I do have more sympathy for the authors in all this, as they’re subject to new sales figures and the whims of publishers when it comes to determining whether they sold enough copies to place more books—and there are plenty of stories of publishers not taking extenuating circumstances into consideration. But again, that comes down to the publishers making bad decisions, and they’ll do that whether Amazon is involved or not.

Sinking ARCs

So, where are these cheap new books coming from? For new-release titles, they’re probably Advance Review Copies (ARCs) that the publisher flung hither and yon with the usual mad abandon. John Scalzi posts photos periodically of all the ARCs and review copies he gets—stacks and stacks of them; far more than he could ever read.

Multiply a review copy for every title by every would-be reviewer, and there are tens or hundreds of thousands of free copies of books floating around out there, and they have to go somewhere. (One of the criticisms commonly leveled at late Amazon mega-reviewer Harrier Klausner was that she probably made a good deal of money by receiving 50 ARCs a week and then reselling them on Amazon.) Publishers have tried to lessen this ARC glut by switching over to E-ARCs, which can’t be resold in such a way, but such E-ARCs tend to come with so many extra hoops to jump through that they end up turning would-be reviewers off.

The Remainders of the Day

Update: I was contacted by an Amazon public relations representative, who informed me that remaindered books would not be considered “new” (and hence, eligible for the “Buy” button) by the criteria Amazon uses to denote that category. Specifically, the section explaining what books can be called “new” states: “Books with markings of any kind on the cover or pages, books marked as ‘Bargain’ or ‘Remainder,’ or with any other labels attached, may not be listed as New condition.” Books marked as remainders can be marked as “Used — Like New,” which are not eligible to get the “Buy” button.

The representative noted, “We have listed and sold books, both new and used, from third party sellers for many years. The recent changes allow sellers of new books to be the ‘featured offer’ on a book’s detail page, which means that our bookstore now works like the rest of Amazon, where third party sellers compete with Amazon for the sale of new items. Only offers for new books are eligible to be featured.”

These are the books you used to see on remainders tables in bookstores like Waldenbooks or Barnes & Noble, with big red deep-discount stickers on them and possibly a new ISBN sticker pasted on so they don’t compete with the new edition in inventory tracking systems. (Before I wrote for TeleRead, I ran across a situation where such a remaindered book had ended up mislabeled to Mercedes Lackey, who had no idea what it was.) Like used books, these remaindered extra books don’t generate royalties for the author through their sale, and they don’t get counted toward the book’s official sales figures for purposes of bestseller lists, author contract renewals, and so on.

These books’ competition with the new edition had been limited for the most part, as they usually hit the remainders tables after the new editions’ sales had waned and they were no longer commonly on the bookstore shelves in any great numbers. And even when remainders were listed alongside new-from-the-publisher editions on Amazon, it was the one ordered from the publisher—which counted toward royalties, placement on bestseller lists, and so on—that got the “Buy” button.

But if Amazon is going to list cheaper remaindered books as new, and give them the buy button rather than the publisher’s version, that could set the fox among the chickens for certain. It could even potentially lead to publishers opting to destroy all unwanted extra copies rather than selling some of them to remainders dealers—a sad waste, especially in an era when people are paying more attention to environmental consequences, but publishers aren’t going to want to take more money out of their own mouths. And there is precedent—in the wake of the Kirtsaeng decision okaying the practice of importing cheap foreign editions to resell on eBay, plaintiff publisher Wiley raised its prices on those foreign editions.

This piece in New Republic suggests that remaindered copies are among those getting the “Buy” button. I haven’t seen official confirmation, but it seems plausible. The Publishers Weekly piece linked in my first paragraph says Amazon’s criteria for “new” copies are “brand-new, unused, unread copy in perfect condition. The dust cover and original protective wrapping, if any, is intact. All supplementary materials are included and all access codes for electronic material, if applicable, are valid and/or in working condition.”

Remaindered books often have a line drawn through their ISBN/UPC, or a notch cut into them, or some other physical means of marking that they’re remainders. Is that sufficient to disqualify them from being in “perfect condition”? If remainders are eligible, then that’s definitely going to change the game.

But Why Don’t Publishers Try to Push Ebooks Instead?

The ironic thing in all this is that publishers could very easily decrease the impact remainder sales have on their bottom line—if not kill remainder sales altogether—if they just got behind ebooks and pushed hard. If they got competitive with ebook prices instead of trying to keep their prices so high that people simply don’t want to buy them, they could sell more non-resalable copies, and perhaps reduce their print runs which would in turn reduce the number of remainder copies.

But it seems that ever since Amazon and the $9.99 new title, publishers’ support of ebooks has been grudging at best—perhaps because they know that print books keep the print bookstores in business, and they don’t want to lose the bookstores that serve as display showrooms for their newest inventory. Hence, they let Amazon undercut them by slashing its own margins on print copies to where they’re cheaper than the ebook.

And Amazon’s latest clever little trick seems to be bringing all this to a head. Will publishers respond by clamping further down on paper ARCs and remainder sales? Or will they react in some other way? That remains to be seen—but whatever they do, expect a lot more bellyaching in weeks to come about how Amazon drove them to it.

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Published by Chris Meadows

TeleRead Editor and Senior Writer Chris Meadows has been writing for TeleRead--except for a brief interruption--since 2006. Son of two librarians, he has worked on a third-party help line for Best Buy and holds degrees in computer science and communications. He clearly personifies TeleRead's motto: "For geeks who love books--and book-lovers who love gadgets." Chris lives in Indianapolis and is active in the gamer community.
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13 thoughts on “Amazon again courts controversy by tagging the ‘Buy’ button to cheaper books (UPDATED)”

Easy to find if you remember that every time the tradpub establishment wants gripe about Amazon the NYT is front and center with the exact same accusations. They must have a standard article boilerplate.

In this case the only real question is where the books come from and since the books are new the ultimate answer is: the publishers. It’s their distribution system and their responsibility. Those book sellers are nothing new. They’ve been out there for ages. The only thing that has changed is that Amazon is now letting them float to the top if they undercut their own prices. They just levelled the playing field for the third party vendors of books to the same rules as every other product they sell. Of course, the publishing establishment thinks everything is about inconvenienci ng them.

If you *have* to look for ulterior motives, maybe this is Amazon’s way of telling publishers to stop flooding the market with dirt cheap books that undercut their stock.

Or, maybe its a way to put an end to the “print is back” zombie meme.

But, since Amazon’s world isn’t all about publishing, this is most likely just about keeping third party sellers and consumers happy.

Long before Amazon I used to visit the Strand Bookstore in NYC. There was a basement full of review copy books at half price. Back then it was a great deal and lots of fun to browse the stacks. But times they are a changing and I’d be less inclined to pay that price now.

I haven’t been back to the Strand in over a decade, so I’m not sure if the stacks are still there. It sounds like the review copies are being sold on Amazon instead. What once a NYC experience is now a click on the internet.

Also, nowadays when I buy paper books, I want them to be new (unless of of print) and I’d be miffed if I accidentally bought from a third party seller for not paying attention. I have no problem with Amazon selling these books, but they should not be the default option.

Well, how do you know the review copy isn’t still new? Maybe the person never even bothered to open it, so it’s still in the condition he received it from the publisher. For that matter, even a book you pick up from the shelf in a Barnes & Noble may have been read by squatters two or three times.

They’re not the default.
It runs on a case by case basis.
The funny thing is they announced the change in november and they’ve been doing it since march and nobody cared.
Then, overnight, the AG and a dozen scandalmongers claim the sky is falling.

It looks to me that remaindered books count as new as long as the publisher doesn’t mark them in any way. If the publisher merely sells off the pallets of books at remainder prices they are still “new” for Amazon.

True, but at the same time if they’re really concerned about those books competing with their own new ones, all they have to do is run them down an assembly line to slap a “Remaindered” sticker on each copy.

Amazon is playing extremely with outsider merchants by implementing assurances on a developing rundown of brands — and confined classifications. Once in a while, the Amazon Algorithms likewise boycott certifiable items rather than the forgers, retail arbitrage and so forth. Instruments like JungleScout, Sellics, SellerPrime, AmZScout and so on help vendors, all things considered, yet again everything relies on upon the correct item, valuing and rivalry. It would appear Amazon has chosen to start constraining dealers to demonstrate they are approved to offer marked merchandise – and to go along the cost of the approach to the merchants themselves. Presently dealers feel Amazon rushes to suspend business accomplices, to ease back to audit bids and abandons them overpowered with stock they can’t offer.

Amazon is playing extremely with outsider merchants by implementing securities on a developing rundown of brands — and confined classes. Here and there the Amazon Algorithms likewise boycott bona fide items rather than the forgers, retail arbitrage and so forth. Instruments like JungleScout, Sellics, SellerPrime, AmZScout and so forth help vendors, all things considered, however again everything relies on upon the correct item, estimating and rivalry. It would appear Amazon has chosen to start constraining vendors to demonstrate they are approved to offer marked products – and to go along the cost of the arrangement to the dealers themselves. Presently vendors feel Amazon rushes to suspend business accomplices, to ease back to audit requests and abandons them overpowered with stock they can’t offer.